Day Two
Left Salt Lake City towards Wyoming. Wyoming is pretty, and we crossed from its southwestern corner diagonally to its eastern side...a long drive.
Along the way across Wyoming, we stopped at a monument that was part of the Mormon Trail, where a bunch of Mormons died making their way from England to Salt Lake City. The monument was to the importance of the handcart to the Mormons. Apparently, they built handcarts as both their livelihood and to use to get others to Salt Lake City through the treacherous terrain between Iowa/Nebraska and Salt Lake City. (Highway 80 now follows much of the original Mormon Trail, so we'd been on it for some time.)
It was more interesting than I thought it'd be, so we stayed awhile. Naturally, there was no one there except the LDS Elder that ran the place, so we had a personal tour guide of the whole thing. This guy, obviously quite a devout follower, had apparently been a Hell's Angel, riding through the area on his Harley with his wife the first time he came across the site. You'd never have guessed it to look at or talk with him now.
Our ultimate destination was Mount Rushmore (in western South Dakota), but we decided to spend the night in eastern Wyoming in a small town called Newcastle. The hotel in Newcastle was a small quiet affair with a friendly college kid at the front desk and small inn charm. This town was obviously used to having some tourism, but there was absolutely no one around this time of year.
Day Three
Had breakfast in a little cafe in Newcastle that was a former flour mill called Toomey's Mill. It looked like something out of a movie—old guys in cowboy boots with false teeth that craned their necks to see who the strangers were when we walked in. On to South Dakota, twenty-something miles to the east.
Our first stop on the way to Rushmore was another park called Jewel Caves. There's a tour of these underground caves that sounded great, but we missed it by half an hour. There's also supposed to be a spelunking thing you can do in the caves, but it doesn't start until the more touristy season starts. Speaking of the season, there is no one in this part of the country right now. Apparently that's because weather can be unpredictable until May. We lucked out though—blue skies and 75 degree highs.
Mount Rushmore was neat. The National Parks are all on "high security," which in the case of Mt. Rushmore meant lots of rangers with M-16s (!) searching all the cars and metal detectors to get in. Since there weren't very many people around, this wasn't a problem, but I can imagine that it would really slow things down in the prime season.
My first thought looking at Rushmore itself was that it was smaller than I'd imagined. Not that it's small, but it's just not as huge as I'd pictured in my head. It was still impressive, though.
We decided to press on through South Dakota, rather than driving south to Nebraska as we'd originally planned. We drove to Badlands National Park in lower South Dakota. Badlands looks like you'd landed on the moon: chalky, cracked rolling hills. It's interesting, though, and was a pretty drive.
We crossed almost all of South Dakota, and stopped for dinner in a town called Mitchell. This little place called Chef Louie's, "Where Beef is King." They aren't kidding. I ordered BBQ Beef Ribs, and I swear that there were more than a foot-long rack of ribs. Meat falling off the bone and corn chowder for $14.99. Brought a tear to my eye that such a fine cow died for my culinary pleasure. Mmm.
From Sioux Falls, SD, we had to cross into Iowa and follow the Missouri River down to Council Bluffs, and then cross into Omaha, our ultimate destination for the day.